NYCSLS Council
Council Meeting #3
Date: January 11, 2012
Time: 12:00 - 3:00pm
Place: Mid-Manhattan Library
Members in attendance : Linda Cuff (Chair), Christine Hatami (Secretary), Sheila Schofer, Robert Nelson, Sally Young, Linda Williams-Bowie, Arlene Dominguez, Caroline Falovina, Sarah Hinkle, Jody Howard
SLS Office Staff in attendance : Elizabeth Naylor-Gutierrez, Lynne Kresta Smith, Leanne Ellis, Olga Nesi
Documents at meeting:Five-Year Library System Plan of Service
Agenda:
Greetings and Introductions
Announcements and Information
Plan of Service Revision
Projects of Council Members
Announcements and Information
Notes From the Chair
We welcome new Council member Caroline Falovina (NYPL) who is filling in temporarily for Janna Robbin. The election for the position of Vice Chair will be moved to the end of the meeting.
NYCSLS Updates
Lynne and Elizabeth gave an update on activities. Professional development on the Common Core is ongoing, with the third of four weekday sessions and the first of the Saturday sessions completed.
Approximately 75 applications have been received for the Reach grant and school visitations have begun.
Lesson plans for teaching Digital Citizenship will be ready for distribution at the spring conference.
SLS is putting together a grant for New Yorkers Read which may coincide with the upcoming Chancellor's Book Club.
Olga reported that 57 schools currently have CCD collections. These have been posted on the wiki and provide for a sharing of resources. Each school with a CCD collection focuses on a topic and offers to make the resources available to other schools. There is no delivery system at this time but the collections can be accessed online. This year each school received an additional $500 in maintanence fees. Funding in the amount of $10,000 for two schools to establish new CCD collections. Applications will go out soon, which will include tie-ins to the Common Core. There will be a focus on increasing reading of informational text.

Plan of Service Revision
Linda drew the members’ attention to the Plan of Service. The discussion focused on the following items:
  • Element 6-Coordinated Services, Evaluation Methods
  • self-reporting on best practices
  • use of the IFR in implementing the Common Core
  • Element 7-Awareness and Advocacy, administrators and network liaisons
  • Element 8-communications among member librarians
  • Library Advisory Committee
  • Element 9-Cooperative Efforts with other library systems
Lynne will post the completed Plan of Service for members to make final comments.

Election for Vice Chair
Sally Young and Robert Nelson were nominated for the position at the last meeting. There were no additional nominations.
Sally stated that she felt strongly that the Vice Chair should be a librarian and therefore declined the nomination. Robert was voted in unanimously.

Projects of Council Members
Brooklyn Public Library received a Family Literacy Grant which will be used for a new program called Game Space at the Library. This will include board games and video games. BPL will team up with Global Kids to create games with students. A workshop will be held for educators in April, topic TBA. BPL is gearing up for the mock election of the Prince Awards The mock Caldecott winner was Black Out.
Queens Public Library is excited about the new Discovery Center exhibit opening at the Merrick branch. The QPL mock elections for the Caldecott also chose Black Out. Walter Dean Myers visited QPL in December.
NYPL will host the Teaching and Learning Exploratorium on May 16th. A 3-week intensive
Summer Seminar will be held from July 31 – August 17. The theme will be Food in NYC with a
focus on lunch. Many events are being planned, collections of menus will be on view and
participants will be eligible to receive a $2700 stipend.
The Palmer School is involved in the self-study required for ALA accreditation. Their Director resigned in December and Jody is serving as Interim Director. Enrollment has been down and the school is working on more interdisciplinary engagement. Jody has also been nominated to serve on the ALA Council and would like our support.
Christine reported that the UFT Library Media Committee would like to hold a meeting on parent involvement in the library. Discussion focused on the use of the library by parent groups and other meetings.
Robert reported that his school will be using Google Apps for Education with the library as the epicenter. There are 35 iPads utilizing Land School, a classroom management software program that allows him to monitor all PCs, laptops, iPads and mobile computers in the building.

Elizabeth reported that there will be an Apple Educator Night for school librarians on March 15th from 6-9 PM at the UFT.
Linda Bowie-Williams reported that there will be $50,000 in grants available for the purchase of e-readers for Campus libraries. They have received 6 applications so far and expect to be able to fund 5-10 recipients. New Visions is also supervising renovations of the libraries at Kennedy in the Bronx and the High School for Graphic Communications in Manhattan.
It was noted that the Evander Campus has a newly renovated library but no librarian has been hired.
Arlene will be posting the schedule for Family Reading Night which will involve the librarians and the parent coordinators of participating schools. There will be professional development sessions 3-4 nights per year with tie-ins to the Common Core standards, with a focus on non-fiction and critical thinking. This event is sponsored by Target.
Robert reported that Skedula now has a parent module that allows for the posting of overdue notices for library books.
Regarding the posting for the Director’s position, Linda will send an email to Greg on behalf of the Council.
The next meeting will be held on March 8th at the Mid-Manhattan library. A motion was made and seconded to add a 5th meeting. The meeting was adjourned at 3PM.